Displaced Persons Research Links, R -T

Romania, Russia, Yugoslavia

"The real number of concentration and extermination camps established in the occupied Soviet Union by the Nazis is unknown. The following list contains the name of the major camps. Some of these camps were under Romanian control; e.g. Akmétchetka or Bogdanovka where 54,000 were executed between December 21th and December 31th, 1941."Camps in Romania, Russia, Yugoslavia,

Documents issued after 1890 can be found at the Civilian Records Section of City Halls (Oficiul de Stare Civila al Primariei).

The County Archives assist those interested in genealogy searches by providing a wide range of services, from making photocopies of desired records to conducting research on a specific topic.

Services provided by archives are subject to a small fee, currently about $0.14 for a photocopy and about $18.00 and up for specific research. Local travel agencies usually have good contacts in the community and can assist those interested in genealogy searches with translation services, arranging appointments with the staff at the archives and with any other formalities.

For addresses and telephone numbers of national or county archives in Romania please contact the nearest Romanian Tourist Information Office.

Russia

Red Army records Some 11,650 archival lists, indexed from about 1
million pages of doucmentation, were recently uploaded to Yad Vashem's website:
www.yadvashem.org
The Shoah Related Lists Database includes records compiled by Red Army investigators
that were later stored in archives in the former Soviet Union.

Russia is now rewriting World War II history: ACTION UKRAINE
HISTORY REPORT (AUHR) #4
Washington, D.C., Thursday, June 11, 2009

"Moscow also disguises the fact
that Stalin murdered more Russians and other Soviet citizens than Nazi
Germany. Its official figure of 27 million war dead includes several
millions of Stalin's victims during Soviet civilian deportations and military
purges [i.e. Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Georgia, the Baltics,
and others].

While working for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in 1945, Rude took photos for public information. They were used to present positive and negative images to the public as well as the extent of the relief attempt for the agency. The photos are now a part of collection of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. Most of these deal with camps and lives of the displaced persons.

In the latter stages of WWII, it was realized that an estimated 21 million people would need assistance returning to their homelands and finding their splintered families. These displaced persons, or DPs as they were called, became the aftermath of the Nazi World War II expansion. Millions of people in Europe fled or were removed from their homes and/or country. These people were survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, forced labor battalions and death marches.

The UNRRA's effors to take care of these people and to arrange repatriation for them was recorded by Rude. The irony is that the DP camps were former concerntration camps, such as Belsen and Auschwitz or the infamous Wermacht barracks in Widlflecken.

Rude recalls in her book "Remembrances" that, "Displaced Persons were merely survivors -- stateless and homeless; their families had been slaughtered in experimentation camps, lost in concentration camps, or, if lucky, were survivors and were now in other displaced persons camps. All their possessions had been confiscated or destroyed."

"At the end of the war, they were rounded up and temprorarily put into campsÉ Inside the camps, there was domestic activity of all kinds. The people's cultures often came out in what they made and what they did." The camps were over-crowded and living conditions were poor, although for the first time in many years there was enough food to eat.

Rude's photo collection allows the viewer "to dwell on a photographer's vision of the general difficulties of the post-war period, the issue of the search for justice against perpetrators of genocide and the return of life by the victims of the Nazis." Rude said she didn't take her negatives with her when she left Europe. But in 1997 she found out they were in the Holocaust Museum. See http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Visual___Artistic_Resources/Maxine_Rude/maxine_rude.html

This is a very good short history and analysis of why some people consider Ukraine to be a subclass of the Russians, much to the anger of the Ukrainian nationists.

Rusyn

August Sherman's photographed this Ruthenian girl, immigrant from Ukraine, at Ellis Island. Coiled in a embroiled babushka, she stares out with pale eyes, her neck encircled by loops of irridescent beads above a heavily embroilered blouse and shearling vest.

Galizien (This is German / English transliteration of Galician) - same territory as Rusyn
If somebody is interested in Gaklizien (GALIZIEN) German Descendants, especially from Ugartsthal, please see the website at:

Please can you help me. I am trying to trace my grandfather who was from Hungary
(Budapest). He came over to a POW camp in Stuartfield in the north
east of Scotland around about 1945 -1946 but it is possible he was over before
that. Could you tell me if there would be any lists of the personnel who were
at the camp. I would be greatful if you could help me or give me some leads
i could try and follow. With Regards, Donna
Ritchie.

"From the outside, this doesn't look like a place of worship. The small,
corrugated iron hut is pretty anonymous but the crucifix on the door marks
it as special. Inside the drab exterior there is an ornate world of wonder.
Simple wooden pews face a beautifully decorated altar. There are religious
statues on both sides and numerous brightly-coloured ornaments. If you look
closely you can see that they’re hand-made, the best example being the
Blue Peter-style chandelier made from tinsel and coathangers, still going strong
after 60 years service.

"This chapel was built by Ukrainian prisoners of war who were sent here
in 1947. Between 420 and 450 men were imprisoned in Rimini and sent to Scotland
instead of being sent home where they would have been tried as traitors and
faced almost certain death. They arrived in Glasgow wearing German uniforms,
and came to Happendon Lodge near Motherwell, then Carstairs before landing
up in the camp at Hallmuir, 3 miles outside Lockerbie in the Scottish Borders.

"90% of the men were farmers so the Ministry of Agriculture gave them
jobs on the local land. One man, Mr Fallat, bought some fruit seeds from Italy
and planted an orchard that still stands to this day. Inside the church they
were just as creative. The landowner, Sir John Buchanan Jardine gave them this
small hut and after humble beginnings they began to decorate it as a home from
home. On the high altar is a model of their local Ukranian cathedral, carved
with a pen knife. It was made from memory as the Russians destroyed the real
one. The candlesticks beside it are made from shell casings and the standards
surrounding the arch from a tent brought over from Rimini. For a place decorated
in a time of austerity it's wonderfully cheerful."

Slovakia, an independent republic, formerly united with the Czech Republic

2/3/07
I added 150 villages with 20,000 people(surnames) still alive in Slovakia to my web site.
address: http://www.cisarik.com
This week I will enlarge to 420 villages with 53,000 sunames.
I hope, it will be helpful for visitors of this forum.
Juraj
Kosice, Slovakia
for direct mailing to me: jurajcisarik@hotmail.com

Slovenia a republic in north west Yugoslavia, formerly in Austria

"When we came to America 56 years ago, Anton found many people who wouldn't listen or couldn't understand his side of the story. The Yugoslav government had spread lies about how the refugees had collaborated with the Nazis. They called us traitors to our country, and many Americans believed those lies. This hurt Anton deeply. It's hard to express how important it was for Anton to set the record straight, but it wasn't until Anton's articles were published in the Domovina and in Slovenia 40 years later that he felt some balance had been restored.

"The Domovina recently printed some articles about Korotan's trip this past summer to Slovenia to commemorate the 60th anniversary of refugees like my father. Anton received comfort in knowing that all the hardships he endured from refusing to sacrifice his ideals had not been in vain.
"Our first 10 years in America were especially hard for Anton. He arrived full of energy and hope for a better life for himself and his family. Instead, he often found prejudice and exploitation. He worried about his brothers and sisters in Slovenia, many of whom were in prison. And he worried about his sick mother, who died in 1954 with everyone in the family at her bedside except for Anton. He wrote in his diary about his depression, not sure that he could continue living like that. But he had his faith in God, he had Mama, who provided him with unconditional love and support, he had many friends who helped him, and he had a tremendous sense of responsibility for his children. And despite the occasional prejudice, America did provide him with work and freedom and the ability to provide for his family and even prosper."

"Displaced Persons" appeared for the first time as a separate branch of the G-5 in the reorganization of 1 May 1944. (In the Standard Policy and Procedure the designation "DP" was still regarded as a synonym for refugee, and pertinent duties were divided among the civil affairs detachments in the field, the provost marshal, and the local police.) Although nobody then knew what the DPs' full impact on military government would be, the branch from the beginning was one of two reserved for a senior US officer (Supply being the other).

They were certain in large numbers to be Russians [error, Ukrainians weren't allowed to have their own identity] and Poles [also Ukrainians] with some Yugoslavs and Greeks, and inside Germany would be French, Belgians, and Dutch. They were the result of the vast transfer of population that Germany had begun in early 1942 to provide labor for its war industry, farms, and military construction. An Allied agency had estimated that as of October 1943 there were 21 million displaced persons in Europe, mainly in Germany or in territory annexed by the Reich.

The DPs, moreover, could not be ignored even briefly or in the heat of battle, for they might harbor among them a danger to human life, both military and civilian, that was potentially greater than the war itself-the virus-like micro-organism Rickettsia. A benign parasite of the body louse, Rickettsia, when it passes from the feces of a louse into a human body through a bite or opening in the skin, causes typhus, the most feared epidemic disease in Europe since the bubonic plague.

During and after World War I, an estimated three million persons died from the disease in the Balkans and Ukraine. In World War II, a thousand cases had been registered in Naples by early 1944. Always serious and frequently fatal, typhus is endemic in parts of eastern Europe. When war breaks out it begins to spread; humans carrying the louse, host of the disease, provide its transportation. The Germans encountered it in their eastern campaigns, and it was known to have come into Germany with forced laborers and transports to concentration camps.

The U.S. government had established the US Typhus Commission in December 1942 to study the disease and devise methods of control. By early 1944, DDT had been proven highly effective against the louse, hence indirectly also against the disease; however, it had to be applied individually and more than once, since it killed the insect but did not affect the eggs. In a reasonably static population, DDT could in a short time practically wipe out the disease; in a mass eruption and uncontrolled migration of people, carriers might still spread it from one end of Europe to the other in a few weeks.